The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) called on the United States to reject and condemn racist hate speech and crimes following events in Charlottesville including violent attacks on peaceful protesters. The Committee, on which Leitner Center Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence Gay McDougall sits, criticized the “highest political level” of the United States government for failing to “unequivocally reject racist violent events.”

Professor McDougall met with the Committee in Geneva for its ninety-third session from July 31 – August 25, during which it issued a decision recommending that “the Government of the United States of America identify and take concrete measures to address the root causes of the proliferation of such racist manifestation, and thoroughly investigate the phenomenon of racial discrimination targeting in particular against people of African descent, ethnic or ethno-religious minorities, and migrants.”